Quote from: AlexGR on March 07, 2015, 04:53:45 AM

Quote from: smooth on March 07, 2015, 04:42:07 AM

Quote from: AlexGR on March 07, 2015, 04:33:44 AM

As for DRK / NSA PRISM 2.0 analogy, I mean please... it's Bitcoin code with mixing on top. Open source stuff. Too much FUD Roll Eyes

No that is not true at all. You as a user can verify that you are using Bitcoin code or whatever code you want to use. If it were peer-to-peer like bitcoin that could be enough. But it isn't. It is peer-to-masternode(s)-to-peer.

You can't and never will be able to verify what masternodes are doing, as long as they appear to be doing what they are supposed to. But what else they are doing you have no idea. At all.

The elegance of DRK (prior to MN blinding) is that it assumes the worst of the nodes (=that they are corrupt in a high percentage) and works around the issue by multiple rounds of mixing, thus getting very low probabilities of identification even with controlled nodes. You know someone has a FUD vector when he cites the 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000x % probability as a definite loss of privacy.

No, I simply disagree with the math and find that number implausible. I believe that most masternodes will ultimately be compromised, either directly or via VPS or other back doors. If you have one or a few out of 2000 masternodes compromised, yes multiple rounds reduces the risk to nearly nothing. But if you have say 80-90% of masternodes compromised, the number of rounds and the cost of the system to achieve high confidence becomes costly and impractical. And for that matter you can't rationally rule out 99% or even 100% being compromised eventually. I expect that in fact.

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The fact that it also takes a loooot of money to buy all the nodes, which would make the price reach astronomical levels if done by a single entity like the NSA, also helps from a Game Theory perspective so that it can't really happen as the acquisition cost multiplies while an NSA-like player tries tries to obtain the remaining percentages of the MN network.

That's false an assumes only that someone attempts to buy all the nodes very quickly and drives up the price. In fact what is more plausible is for someone buy the nodes slowly and/or attack competing nodes to make them less profitable to encourage node abandonment.

Furthermore I don't really expect nodes being bought to be the primary mode attack, thought that could certainly happen over time too. It will be a combination of legal and quasi-legal attacks (i.e. PRISM) against the node operators themselves and/or VPS operators, and/or flat out compromises via VPS and other back doors. The NSA didn't have to buy all the IT companies, they just got them do the work of collecting the data.